Firstly and most importantly: I’d highly, highly, highly recommend talking to somebody about this. I mean like your husband or a psychiatrist. Ideally, both. If you don’t feel like reading this massive wall of text, I fully understand. If you take nothing else away from this, it is that you should not force yourself to handle this alone. Anyways,

I was diagnosed with major suicidal depression about 7 years ago, and reading this is like looking back through time for me. I’d get back from my classes (when I bothered to go to them), turn on my computer, and play video games. I didn’t enjoy playing video games at the time. It felt like shit. So did literally everything, but that was the one that made time go by fastest. I wasn’t interested, it wasn’t fun, and I felt a ton of guilt because I knew I had other things to be doing. I ate like shit or not at all, didn’t bother cleaning anything, and ended up eating cold ravioli out of the can a lot of the time simply because it required no prep and I wouldn’t have to do any dishes. I frequently thought about how, soon, everything would come crashing down around me and it would only be my fault. The only reason I could think of not to end things was that my family would be torn up about it, and that it would be an ungrateful way to pay them back. I was fantasizing about the best way I could go, the way that would hurt the fewest people. I even made a few suicide attempts that I was lucky enough to survive. Through it all, I was constantly thinking stuff like “If I’m reacting like this to my incredibly comfortable and privileged life, imagine how hard it must be for everybody else. Imagine if you didn’t have a family that loved you, imagine if you didn’t have the money or grades to go to college, imagine if you actually had depression or something. You’re a weak piece of shit for letting this get to you.” Does any of this feel familiar to you, even if it’s not exactly the same? It’s not 1:1, but I think you’re in a similar place to where I was. I managed to get out of that dark place, so let me tell you some of the things I learned.

First, recognize that you need help. I don’t mean this in any sort of derogatory way. What you’re dealing with is extremely difficult to deal with on your own. Do not worry about burdening or troubling other people with it, it’s literally a life-and-death situation. Even if it wasn’t, you do not deserve to suffer like you are. You are not suffering for being a bad person, that other people might have it worse does not make the pain you are feeling any less real, and it can be better.

Second, start small on reaching out. Depression does a lot of nasty stuff to your brain. More than just taking away your ability to feel happy, it’s got a list of other symptoms that are a mile long. Most of them don’t show up in everybody with depression, depression is still a very poorly understood illness. There’s even thoughts that what we refer to as depression may be a whole host of similar but fundamentally different conditions. Anyways, among these are lots of things that lead to a decreased ability to get things done on your own. Less initiative and lower energy. Anxiety and apathy. These are things that make actually getting the help you need much harder, even once you recognize that you need it. So to start off with, you don’t need to go through the hassle of finding a psychiatrist, scheduling an appointment, and all the annoying stuff that entails. Start with your husband or a relative. Open up to them about how you’ve been feeling and ask them for their help. They’ll almost certainly want to do what they can. See if they’d be willing to help get you in the door of a psychiatrist. If they yes, leave it in their hands for a little while. Check in if it takes too long, and move on your own if you feel like they might not get around to it. Ultimately, a medical professional is your best bet on getting out of the situation you’re in.

Third, tread water. Whatever measures your doctor ends up recommending, it’ll take time to kick in. Whether through therapy or medication, change does not happen instantly and antidepressants are often trial-and-error. In my case, it even got worse before it got better. It took four different antidepressants before we found one that made a positive difference. That means that you’ll need to stick it out until things get better. That’s hard, I know how very hard that can feel, but it’s so, so worth it. The biggest thing that helped me was thinking in the moment. I also thought a lot about what my life would be like when I was older. It overwhelmed and terrified me. You’ll want to think about the far future because your brain is being an asshole to you and wants to think up the worst, most scary situations it can. It does so in the future because the farther you go into the future, the less set in stone things are. The way I found best to avoid that was narrowing my scope. Don’t think about 10 years from now if you can’t handle it. Think about the next year instead. If you can’t handle that, think about the next month. Think about the next week. Think about today. Think about the next hour, the next 10 minutes. Handle however much you can handle and keep putting one foot in front of the other. Your goal at this point is to keep yourself afloat. On top of all this, keep talking to your loved ones about how you’re feeling. Lean on them. If you’re feeling particularly bad, let them cut you some slack. Any task is harder when you’re trying to put up a brave face.

By age 19, I was convinced my life was over. All the good times were behind me and everything that was before me was pain, loneliness, and evil. I couldn’t even conceive of going another year without eventually killing myself. By 21, I had felt happy, an actual, real, excited happiness for the first time in as long as I could remember. Not the usual relief of not having to worry about something, but a feeling that a good thing was happening. It was something that I could not have dreamed would happen before. Nothing had really changed for the better externally. To the contrary, my grades finally caught up with me, I had lost my scholarship, and was forced to drop out, leave the state, and move back in with my parents. But even still, I felt better. I felt like things were good. I think that you can get to a similar place, too. I want that for you very much and wish you nothing but luck.